It employs millions of people, from shirt-stitchers in Asian sweatshops to physiotherapists, cleaners to chief executives, groundsmen to players.

It influences the lives of most people on this planet somehow or another, either with the global flows of money, popular culture, the news agenda, the success or failure of TV companies who win or lose broadcast rights, and which down-on-their-luck has-beens might get a place on Celebrity Big Brother 2047.

And it is, demonstrably, absolutely and utterly, f*****.

It is as screwed up as Paul Gascoigne's liver, as Malky Mackay's idea of funny, as Richard Keys' smashing sexual politics.

And if the public image of any company involved random violence, fascism, law-breaking, puerile misogyny and casual ignorance it would, quite simply, fail.

People would not invest, buy, or trade. Customers, shareholders, and prospective employees would give it a wide berth. The money would evaporate, along with the public's goodwill.

But not football.

Football is a game where it is perfectly acceptable for those behind-the-scenes to work under conditions that are fundamentally slave labour.

Just four months ago it was widely reported that the England national team's shirts - sold to gullible mugs for £90 a pop - were made by Indonesians earning just 30p an hour. The response from the company involved - just one of half a dozen major names which have been likewise implicated - said they would investigate immediately.

(Image: Nike)

No-one ever says: "This is so unacceptably medieval that from now on we will pay those labourers a minimum wage that would be reasonable for a shirt we have hitherto immorally flogged at 300 times what it cost to sew, and are very bloody sorry."

Meanwhile, construction workers are still slaving for years in conditions which you or I would find intolerable in about 2.3 seconds.

(Image: Getty)

Last year Cardiff City manager Malky Mackay was sacked, apparently for spending too much money on player transfers. He was expecting to take up a new role at Crystal Palace until his former boss Vincent Tan sent a dossier to the Football Association of text messages Mackay had exchanged with colleague Iain Moody.

There are many who say this is sour grapes on the part of a vindictive ex-boss who's refusing to honour transfer deals and is threatening legal action. There are others who say these were private messages, and it's unfair.

They say: "Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers." And: "Not many white faces amongst that lot but worth considering." And: "He's a snake, a gay snake. Not to be trusted." And finally, on a female football agent: "I hope she's looking after your needs. I bet you'd love a bounce on her falsies."

Sour grapes, private, whatever. Those text messages are disgusting, abhorrent, and belong in the 4th century along with the man who composed them.

What's football doing about it, and about a sport where such talk is still commonplace when it's been all but stamped out of every other workplace on Earth?

A child who's wiped its own poop on the walls for a laugh can apologise more convincingly than that.

And whatever happens, you can bet that it won't be too long before collective amnesia sets in and Mackay and Moody find a club to work at where anyone with social standards above the pigsty will be told to lump it.

Football has a very short memory, particularly for its own failings. And the greatest case in point is perhaps Paul Gascoigne, a brilliant, stupid, magical and utterly cursed player.

The man is ill, and has been for a long time. He's beloved by millions still who hate to see him this way, but despite being a star of the world's most popular sport for almost his entire adult life - the best opportunity, you might think, to help someone with his illness - he has not got better.

(Image: Flynet)

Gazza is, in every respect, a public persona. His personal triumphs and tragedies, from penalty misses to a beaten wife, temporary recovery and reality TV, are a public show. There is I suspect a large part of him which needs the attention, because he often seems to rally after a big dose of it and falls off the wagon when all goes quiet.

What did football do for this wunderkind which made it millions, endeared it to billions? With all its wealth and expertise in this field?

It paid him. It petted him. It tolerated his addictions, because football is a business which tolerates one of the highest addiction rates in the world. And despite the help he had from some it has not worked, because not only does Gazza continue to have an illness, football has absolved him from the responsibility of recovering from it.

Last year his celebrity chums rallied around to send him to rehab. At other times, they've paid his rent. It's simply taught Gazza that someone else will always solve his problems and as low as he's been he still hasn't been low enough to find a reason to stay dry.

Football has made him a caricature, and when his mental health got so bad he turned up at the police siege of gunman Raoul Moat with some chicken and a fishing rod we simply took the mick. We buy him a drink, because we love him and in return he capers about for our pleasure.

There are millions of chronic alcoholics in the world, and not all of them want to get better. Perhaps Gazza is one of them, but seeing as football ignored his blossoming problems, it set a pattern which means he is now the most famous, and helpless, alcoholic in the world.

He's 47, for Pete's sake, and looks about 90. With every resource football has to help him, he should be in the best possible position to recover, but it seems that a bum under a bridge would have a better chance.

We could list football's flaws all day, the way violence on the pitch is tolerated when it would lead to an arrest on the public highway. And there'll be plenty who say journalism is no better. But I've seen my profession clean up its act in the 20 years I've been in it - can you say the same for football?

The fault is not just the fat old men at the top of the game, the ones who issue meaningless statements to the Press about the latest scandal and carry on as before.

(Image: Image Net)

It's us, too. We tell ourselves that the camaraderie we feel on the terraces is felt by everyone else, at every level. We think the pleasure our youngsters get from the new shirt makes the factory worker's wages unnoticeable. We think that buying Gazza a pint won't hurt.

We think that if we call it The Beautiful Game enough, it will magically become all shiny and lovely and great.

Like any business, football has to shake itself up, kick out the dinosaurs, own up to a duty of care for its staff and set a better example.

And like any business, it won't do so until the customers vote with their feet.

If you care about any of it, watch on free channels, keep away from the grounds, and tell your children they can have a shirt if they're prepared to stitch it themselves in return for 30p. But don't just sit there and tweet Gazza's daughter, or discuss whether "banter" is an adequate excuse.